Pointing out that there are strong female characters in recent films who are also completely interesting in their own right-- she cites Peggy Carter in Captain America, and I would stick up for Lisbeth Salander-- and acknowledging that the presence of the SFC recognizes sexism in culture, McDougall asks why movies don't do more to combat the sexism by actually including more female characters.

If you think the visuals in this summer's big movies have impressed you, just wait until you get a look at David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints. Without a single giant robot or skyscraper getting knocked over, Ain't Them Bodies Saints is easily one of the year's most visually impressive movies, crammed with the kind of lush cinematography and Texas locations that made Terrence Malick famous.

Is it possible for a love story between a man and his computer to break your heart? If Spike Jonze has anything to do with it, yes. The first trailer for Jonze's first film in 4 years has debuted online, and you can either watch it above or in HD at Apple. It starts with tinkling piano music from Aphex Twin and only gets more plaintive from there

While we don't know much about this mysterious McGuffin, wedo know that Tevez, Luis, and Weinstein will play the three boys at the film's center. Sheen will be playing a character called Father Julliard, so presumably a priest. Mara is set to portray an NGO aid worker, embedded in this poverty-stricken place. The roles of Moura and Mello are currently unknown.

While we wait for David Fincher to figure out just what his next directing effort will be, and even if he'll take on the increasingly unlikely-seeming The Girl Who Played With Fire, we've got a brief, gorgeous collaboration between him and his Dragon Tattoo muse Rooney Mara to feast our eyes on.

But while it's cause for celebration that Craig will likely be back for The Girl Who Played With Fire, there remains to be question marks surrounding Fincher's involvement. Following Mara's responses about Craig, the outlet took the opportunity to ask whether or not Fincher would be coming back for the sequel.. "I would hope that he would," she said. "But no matter what, he'll definitely have some sort of involvement."

THR says Craig “wants(s) a pay raise, not a cut, in the wake of Skyfall grossing $1 billion worldwide.” As a result, Craig’s character in the movie – journalist Mikael Blomkvist – might be written out of the sequel, erased from screenwriter Steven Zaillian’s treatment of the sequel.

Side Effects is a movie by Steven Soderbergh, so you can pretty much guarantee it's not going to look like you're average off-the-rack thriller. But it's also a twisty and sometimes even scary thriller, the kind of thing that you really can sell to any audience, even if it requires masking some of the weird quirks that make it distinctly Soderbergh's

Rooney Mara plays a woman treated for emotional imbalances by a pioneering psychiatrist (Jude Law). But legal complications arise when the pill prescribed by the doc create, as the title suggests, unexpected (and violent) side effects.

There are many, many reasons to get excited about Transcendence, starting with the fact that it's the directorial debut of Christopher Nolan's longtime director of photography Wally Pfister, and he's already got Johnny Depp on board to star in a film with a very secret plot. Add that to recent rumors that that story has Johnny Depp's character turning into a supercomputer

Steven Soderbergh still swears he's heading into retirement, with the HBO Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra set to air next year, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. But first there's what will hopefully not actually be his final theatrically release film, Side Effects, which debuted its first trailer online today

Rooney Mara, Ben Foster and Casey Affleck are all presently circling Ain’t Them Bodies Saints which is said to be a contemporary crime drama in the vein of Bonnie and Clyde. Whether that means a pair of crooks who have a twisted love life that binds them together through their exploits, or that it's meant to shake up our expectations of the genre (or both) remains to be seen as no further plot details or even vague character descriptions are being released at this time.

An Education producers Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey have attached Mara to Brooklyn to play the lead, Lacey. They've likewise lined up An Education's screenwriter Nick Hornby to adapt Toibin’s novel into a romantic drama, fitting considering Brooklyn seems similar in theme to the Oscar-nominated adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir.

It's been 10 years since Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze last collaborated, on the hugely beloved Adaptation, but the distinctive writer and director are gearing up to work together again, with Jonze planning to direct Kaufman's script this year

Mara “just committed” to join Effects, which was written by Soderbergh’s frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!). She’ll play Emily Hawkins, an unstable young woman addicted to prescription drugs who’s trying to cope with her husband’s recent release from prison. Without getting into too many spoilers (and the Deadline piece gives away more than it should, in my opinion), the film takes a violent turn, and could turn into a courtroom thriller

The studio will be moving forward on parts two and three of Larsson’s trilogy, with Tattoo screenwriter Steve Zaillian tacking adaptation duties. And that makes sense. While Tattoo can be viewed as a standalone story, there’s really no reason to start down this path of American versions of the popular stories if you aren’t going to finish the series.

It’s no surprise that David Fincher’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film isn’t doing gangbusters at the box office. The hard-R film is frequently referred to as “that rape movie” which is enough to scare off a lot of viewers, and Fincher’s brand of gritty thriller doesn’t always appeal to the masses. Barely breaching the $60 million mark after two weeks in theaters, the obvious question becomes whether or not the second and third books in the series will find their way to the big screen and remain economically viable.

Guaranteed, this will be the creepiest thing you see online today. Two years ago, relative newcomer Noomi Rapace set the standard for playing Lisbeth Salander - the androgynous goth computer hacker who Stieg Larsson introduced in his best-selling Millennium trilogy - and few thought another actress could play her as effectively… until Rooney Mara reinvented the role for David Fincher’s American adaptation of the familiar material.

Jessica Biel is in “final negotiations” to join writer-director Francesca Gregorini's film, a heartwrenching story (on the surface, at least) about Emanuel (Scodelario), a teenager hired by her troubled neighbor to babysit her “daughter,” which turns out to be a doll. The teen goes along with the woman’s delusion, primarily because the neighbor closely resembles Emanuel’s deceased mom. Talk about a sticky wicket.

By all accounts every sacrifice paid off-- even the film's weaker reviews single Mara out, and though she says she's "shot myself in the leg" in finding equally worthwhile projects to do next, she's suddenly a very big deal when a year ago few people knew her name. I talked to Mara-- still with the black hair, though minus the many piercings